Cloud Drives and survival

[OHOD]

This thread was interesting to read, because I had no clue of what "cloud storage" was.
So I was thinking, scratching my noggin and came up with an idea....Google!

Now I know what "cloud storage" is.

To answer your question, I will go with a famous quote everyone knows:
"It's not a secret if you tell someone else."

Therefore, if cloud storage is provided by a third party, then nothing is a secret.
Also, who is to say that the third party, even multiple third parties will not be able to retrieve your data when SHTF or TEOTWAWKI or any other major problem?

But, meh, what do I know.

[oddball]

For a SHTF situation, the last thing on my mind are mp3 files of songs and movies.

I have a Kingston DataTraveler flashdrive that stores my important business documents, scanned PDF copies of personal documents, family photos, etc.

All ready to go sitting with my Get Out of Dodge stuff.

[xrMike]

I don't think people realize how fragile the internet is. There are so many points of failure. In a societal meltdown, even if temporary, you've got the power grid, all of that infrastructure, and the employees who won't be coming to work to maintain it...

Same thing for cell phones.

16 GB thumb drives are so cheap now.

[Ripon83]

Not to mention our government wanting to turn it off when they feel it's necessary. Which probably would correspond to when you want your files the most.

[echo1]

I have vinyl, photographs, charts, and compass. I'm clueless about it all. My crew calls me the "Analog Warrior". They can use all the media and store a bunch of stuff for me. PAX

[wjc]

I work for one of the major players in the cloud push. All it boils down to is shared storage and shared applications. There is no great breakthrough except for decreased cost of having your own data center.

Plus...people you don't even know now have access to your personal correspondence!

I'll never use it for anything of importance.

[paul0660]

[ExtremeX]

I love how loose the term Cloud is used in today's tech world. Cloud has turned into a marketing term, just like Tactical.


In a nut-shell and in its most simplistic form, Cloud = Internet.


1st off, Not all cloud storage is created equal. Just like a home server with a raid array, Internet storage isn't any different. Its managed by a 3rd party and is subject to the same risks as any other data storage device. Some may be on an high grade enterprise SAN (storage area network), some of it may be replicated over a WAN to other sites for redundancy. Regardless of how you chop it up, your data is only as safe and secure as the data center its sitting in. For all you know it could be some punk kid with a few TB of rack storage in his garage offering free Cloud storage and opening up file shares looking at ur girls nudy photos or personal data... What makes you think someone at Google or MS cant do this?


I manage a server room for a small company and have our own private cloud. This data is still accessible from anywhere in the world, over encrypted VPN unlike most public cloud storage. This is the biggest difference, we still own the data, the servers it sits on, and everything else. We also have block level replication to our second office, the purpose for this is geographical diversity of the data. Not much good if a meteor hits your free amazon cloud storage data center and that data isn't replicated. Replication cost money, I doubt free solutions offer this level of protection. I know some do, for a price.


If you want to be in control of your data, you need to own it or be in control of it. If security is a concern, then use cloud storage, but don't expect to have access to it in the event of a catastrophic infrastructure failure, power outage, ISP downtime, or whatever ever else can and may happen. The Internet is fragile, as another member said, and your cloud storage is only as good as your weakest point in the chain.


In regards to security, I saw two options here I personally use myself. Ironkey and Truecrypt (open source encryption). If you ever need to upload private data onto storage you don't own, you best bet is to create a container in Truecrypt and use keyfiles + a password that is complex. The Ironkey is cool, but Truecrypt offers a higher level of encryption.


Password protecting a zip file is just pointless... ultra weak security with a false sence of security. The average Joe can bust that open in no time. How do you think professional password recovery companies do it? There not a magic breed of hackers. Just someone willing to spend $100 on software. http://www.elcomsoft.com/archpr.html

[crazy]

Justice dept already tried to gain access to data stored on any cloud, said that a shared storage solution had no expectation of privacy therefore no warrant should be required to look at anyone's stuff. Fortunately the courts said no.

But still, it could happen, or more than likely it could get hacked. If you want to store your stuff in the cloud just bear in mind that it's not really that secure at any one time.

OTOH, I wonder if one could store a truecrypt image on the cloud?

I may have to try this.

I knew it was only a matter of time before something like this was going to come up.

[sl4ck3r]

I think cloud storage is great for backup, but I wouldn't use it as my only source for information. Single point of failure == bad.

I use truecrypt for important confidential stuff. I have drives in a Raid 0 and also copies to an external HD. Then it backs up to CrashPlan's servers (including the truecrypt volume). From what I understand the data is encrypted before it is sent to CrashPlan so that should help on security as well. http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/security.html